Channel Islands - Anacapa

We went up to the Channel Islands off the coast of Ventura/Santa Barbara last weekend and visited and camped on Anacapa Island. I didn't even know these islands existed until Marie, my new French friend asked if I wanted to go. Funny how it takes someone from half a world away to make us realize what's in our own back yards. On the boat ride over, there were lots of dolphins jumping all around us and chasing our boat to be playful. We also had a sea gull following the boat, showing us a preview of things to come. Note - some of the best pictures I will show were taken by Marie, so I need to give her the credit (the sea gull is just one of them).










Once on the island, we immediately realized that we would be surrounded by sea gulls. There were hundreds of thousands of them all over the island with their cute young ones.









There were some really beautiful views all over the island as well.


















We camped for a night with only 2 other groups of people, but we were not lonely because of all the birds. They settled down at night, but woke up and started making plenty of noise at about 5AM. If you want to get an idea of the sounds, take a look at the video below.









We went snorkeling because we had heard that was supposed to be really good here. One thing it definitely was was cold! The water was probably close to 60 degrees - even very cold in a full wet suit. We did get to swim with tons of kelp forests and sea lions! The underwater pictures are not the best quality, but the one of the sea lion looking up at me is my favorite - so cute! Okay, the one of Marie is cute too (see Scott in the background completely freezing without a wet suit!) You can hear the sea lions in the background in the video and should be able to see them in one of the island shot pictures.








Birds and sea lions were not the only creatures on the island - I had to include my masterpiece picture of the ladybug with perfect colors - I'm not bragging or anything. ;-)









We were supposed to catch the 11:30AM boat back to the mainland, but there was a communication error and the boat left without us. We had to wait 4 hours for the next one, but no worries. We read, I snorkeled again and ... I took a little nap.








The company was so sorry about their mishap that they gave us a full refund of our whole trip! A very fun weekend and now I want to visit more of these islands.